Through the past brightly
“Well, I’m back,” he said. — Sam Gamgee at the summation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord Of The Rings”
Any soul can sleep, few can die
Any wimp can weep, few can cry Everyone complains, few can state
Anyone can stop, few can wait
It’s hard It’s very very very very hard — Pete Townsend
from
“It’s Hard”
I told myself when
I finally I got home after 14 months in various, healthcare facilities, I would finally get back to finishing the tale: Mike, Pete and Don Do the Angernangernacks” and to mine own self, I fully intend to be true but, first, a quick word about the return to Crib Negus.
I’m home, at last and while I’m certainly grateful, It’s been hard, indeed, harder than I thought it would be — harder to sit down, harder to stand up after sitting, harder to keep myself as clean as
I’d like (eeww), harder to do pretty much everything. But I am home.
So let’s get back to it. Hang on while I pour myself a wee dram of Jameson.
My buddies, Mike and Pete and yours truly, where 19 when we embarked on our first extended, long distance trip away from home.
After driving 500 miles to Deruyter, NY, following a day’s rest, we drove another 200 miles to Lake Placid, high in the Adirondack Mountains. Mike and Pete, lifelong Michigan flatlanders, were suitably impressed.
To people living outside of the state, the name New York conjures up images Queens, the Bronx and the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
In truth, outside NYC, Buffalo,
Rochester and Syracuse, upstate New York is a mainly rural landscape of hills, lakes, trout streams and small towns, many of which have been there prior to the War for Independence.
While Michigan has miles of famous trout water, not to mention the Great Lakes, upstate New York is chock-a-block with inland lakes, winding rivers and the picturesque little tributaries that feed them. Nearly every creek is a trout stream and every trout stream flows through a small village or hamlet.
Chittenango Creek, with its majestic 140 foot falls, lay a couple miles east of my house and Limestone Creek ran a few miles to the west, ending up at Deruyter Reservoir.
At one time or another, while a boy, I fished Chittenango Creek, Onondaga Creek, Limestone Creek, Butternut Creek, Esopus Creek and (whew) Bishop’s Brook.
The Adirondack State Park encompasses nearly the entire northeastern part of New York State. The park was established in 1892 “for the free use of all the people for their health and pleasure” and for water shed protection.*
At 6.1 million acres, Adirondack is the largest park in the lower 48. It is larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Canyon and Great Smokies National Parks combined.
After a couple days camped in the mountains just outside of Lake Placid, we headed back west to spend a few days at my grandfather’s cottage in Deruyter. Now we’re getting somewhere.
* Annual Report of the Forest Commission 1892
And so it went.